I hope you have been enjoying a good book during your independent reading at home. There's nothing better than curling up under the covers with a fantastic story!

I would love to hear about the books people in class are reading independently. Also, good summarizing skills are essential to practice, so let's do that this week.

This Week's Prompt:

Write a summary about the book you are reading. Remember to address "who, what, where, when, and why." Once you give an overall summary, zoom in to the part you most recently read and summarize that in more detail.

Have you ever read a book that has a meaningful message? When you finish the book, you feel as though you just learned something about yourself, other people, and life. We call the message of a story a "theme."

A theme is a central idea to a story, a general statement or truth that can be applied to many different situations. ​Stories can have more than one theme, and each theme can be stated in different ways. You just have to support your chosen theme with evidence from the text.

For example, in the book "There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom," one of the themes is "believe in yourself." The reason this can be one of the themes is because of how Bradley Chalkers changes. For most of the story, Bradley doesn't believe in himself. He has low self esteem and therefore treats other people and himself badly. When his counsellor, Carla Davis, shows that she believes in Bradley no matter what, and convinces him that he's a great kid, Bradley's self esteem improves. He learns to believe in himself, and by doing that, he starts to work hard at school, be kind to his peers, and finally make real friends.

The theme of a story develops as characters respond to challenges. During the climax of a story, a character usually has to change or make a tough decision. By the end of the story, a character usually thinks or acts differently because of something they learned. This is when the theme becomes clear. By analyzing the challenges, the climax, and the character changes, you can figure out the theme.

This Week's Prompt:

Describe a theme of a book you have finished this year. Support your reasoning with evidence from the text. Remember to explain enough of the story so that people who haven't read it can understand what it is essentially about.

For our next Reading Response Blog (#9), we're moving to Google Classroom since the website wasn't working so well this week. We'll see if Google Classroom makes it easier to respond and keep track of responses.

Authors like to make us think when we read. They don't always make the meaning of their words obvious. Instead of stating things explicitly, authors say things implicitly. While this can be confusing to some readers, finding the hidden meaning in the text can be exciting. It is also similar to what we experience in real life when interacting with other people. It's not always obvious what another person is thinking or feeling.

​As readers, we need to make inferences to find the hidden meaning in text.

This Week's Prompt:Describe an important inference you had to make recently in your independent reading. To do this:

First provide a little introduction that gives us some background information on the story.

Next, tell what the author wrote that you believe had hidden meaning (as best you can remember, or you can quote it).

Finally, explain the hidden meaning of the text.

Need a hint? Inferences about characters can often be made by how the author describes their body language (eye roll, sigh, slouched shoulders, fidgeting, etc.) or the way they say something (with a sigh, quietly, loudly, while keeping busy, etc).

Summarizing is an important skill. It helps you focus on what is important in a story or text and sequence the main ideas in a logical way. A strategy to help you summarize a story is to first list what happens in order, then think about how those things are tied together. Transition words such as "after," "meanwhile," "even though," and "when," can help link ideas and make your summary easier to write.

This Week's Prompt:

Summarize what you have been reading independently. Tell the main ideas about what happens, and give background information so that readers know the who, what, where, when, and why.

Great descriptions really make a story come to life! Great descriptions use precise details, figurative language, and/or interesting vocabulary to enhance a reader's experience with the text.

You can analyze descriptions in a number of ways. One way is to decide if the author means the description "literally" or "figuratively."

Literal: the author means exactly what he or she writes. For example, "A few cold drops of rain fell on the children's noses and their cheeks and their mouths. The sun faded behind a stir of mist. A wind blew cold around them." This is a great, precise description of the start of a rain storm. The author means exactly what he says.

Figurative: the words are used in a way that is different from the usual meaning. Figurative language creates a picture in your mind. For example, "The children pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds, intermixed, peering out for a look at the hidden sun." The author does not mean that the children are actually roses or weeds. This description makes you think of roses and weeds crowded together, then relate that to a crowd of children trying to see the sun.

This Week's Prompt:Look through your independent reading for a great description of a setting, a character, or an action.

Quote the description accurately and provide background information about it.

Explain the meaning of the description and tell if the author means the words literally or figuratively.

I look forward to reading the great descriptions you choose! Bonus points if you find both a literal description and a figurative description!

Believable characters are what make a good story. Complex characters that have a realistic combination of traits and interesting flaws can really bring a story to life.

One of my favorite characters is Bradley Chalkers from There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom. Although Bradley comes across as a mean, uncaring, and pessimistic jerk at first, deep down, he struggles with extremely low self-esteem and doesn't believe that he is capable of making friends or doing well in school. Watching him learn to believe in himself (with the help of Carla) was the best part of the book!

The Week's Prompt:Choose a character from your independent reading that you feel is believable, complex, and well-developed. Describe the character's traits. Does the character have any flaws? If so, describe those too.

I hope that you have finished a few good books so far this school year. One of the best ways to figure out what to read next is to hear about the books that your classmates love.

This Week's Prompt:What is your favorite book that you have read (or are reading) so far in fifth grade? Give us a succinct summary and tell us why you like it. Also, if you can tell us where we can find a copy of it, that would be helpful!

This week's in class reading response blog is by the same author as "Slower Than the Rest." The story is called, "Boar Out There," by Cynthia Rylant. You can find it posted on Google Classroom. Go read it!

This Week's In-Class Prompt Choices: (choose one)

Character Study: Describe a character’s traits. Make inferences about the character’s personality, backing them up with details from the text.

Message Inspection: Explain the message of the story. Describe how you used the text to pull together the greater meaning of the story.

Great Description: Find a vivid description and quote it accurately. Explain its meaning. Point out what you think the author did well in writing it.

Type your response of Google docs and then paste it into the comments section below by Tuesday, November 8th.